Syncano at the UX Dev Summit 2016

The Syncano Developer Evangelists travel to South Florida, meet amazing people, and even learn a few things.

The Syncano Developer Evangelist team recently sponsored and attended the first UX Dev Summit in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The focus of the conference was teaching UX professionals and developers how to better collaborate to build great products together. Often, in the real world, this collaboration between these two branches of product development is lacking or even nonexistent.

We were excited about this conference from the beginning and decided to become the Platinum Sponsor. The UX Dev Summit really aligned with our vision as a company. Building a great user experience is what Syncano is all about. We want designers and developers to not have to worry about the hassles and maintenance of backend development, so that they can build beautiful applications that delight their users.

We are so glad we were able to sponsor this event! From the very first day, there was a buzz in the air as everyone was excited to be there. New friends were made, and the traditional lines between UX and development were blurred. We met many talented and ambitious individuals throughout the conference.

At the Syncano booth, we gave away t-shirts, Google Chromecasts, and an iPad Mini, to people who wanted to try out our platform. We came up with five different mini hacks to showcase some of Syncano's best features. The mini hacks ranged in complexity from simply creating a Data Object in the Syncano Dashboard to writing the correct code to make a real-time file uploader function properly.

The mini hacks were a hit. We had many people trying the platform and winning prizes. Some very talented developers even completed all five on the first day!

Throughout the day, there were excellent speakers giving talks about a variety of UX and front end development topics. Many people were switching between UX and development sessions. Each came away with a better understanding of, and respect for, the work and processes that go into each of these positions.

On day two, our own Kelly Andrews gave a more in-depth talk about Syncano to developers at our booth. He talked about how serverless applications built on platforms like Syncano are the future of web development. They allow you to take the repetitive tasks that all backend developers face -- such as user authentication, data management, and integration with third-party services -- and get them working quickly and easily. This leaves you with more time to build a great user experience on the front end.

On the third day, the attendees had a chance to put what they had learned into action in the "Design-a-thon". The participants were split into groups of five and asked to re-envision Syncano's user Dashboard. They were given information about the company, pain points that had been brought up by users, and personas for different types of users.

The groups really hit the ground running on this task. They were immediately engaged and contributing great ideas and feedback. Developers and designers were working together seamlessly, exchanging their experiences with the Dashboard and how it could be improved.

At the end of the day, the groups presented their ideas and we were absolutely blown away. Each group investigated the problems very thoroughly and came up with excellent solutions to solve them. The presentations were very creative. They included mock ups, insight into their processes, and even role-playing!

All-in-all, we were so impressed by the solutions and collaboration that each team achieved. They gave us many ideas to think about, and even to implement in the future.

The UX Dev Summit was a great experience for us and we are honored that we were able to sponsor it. We hope all of the attendees enjoyed the conference as much as we did, and we hope to be back next year!

If you're curious, you can try out the mini hacks we used at this conference. They're a great way to check out some of the functionality Syncano offers and determine if it's a good fit for your next application.